Avatar Zombie AU
by Agent544
Summary: (to be retitled) A post-modern zombie au featuring our favourite characters from avatar: the last airbender. No bending. Zutara.
1. Chapter 1

"C'mon Katara, we need to go! Now!"

Katara was about to turn away from the shelf she was clearing, when she heard a small sound.

"Katara, hurry!"

But there was the noise again. It sounded like a small voice, but Katara couldn't be certain. She hadn't heard any voice but her brother's for the past four days. She gestured sharply for him to hush, but of course, he didn't.

"Leave it to a girl to mess up a mission! We need to get out!"

Katara desperately wanted to tell him off for his sexism, but instead she grabbed him and clamped one hand firmly over his mouth.

And there it was again! The small voice was definitely saying, "help!"

So Katara dragged her brother out of the kitchen and down the hallway, listening all the while. When she heard the voice again, she approached the third door on the right and tried the handle.

"Locked. Spirits damn and blast. Sokka, pass me my ax."

Instead, Sokka licked her hand, causing her to let go in surprise.

"Do you know how many germs you just ingested?" she asked, appalled, "I haven't had a chance to wash my hands since we started this mission!"

Sokka spit several times on the floor before glaring up at her, "Katara, what in the spirit's names are you doing?"

And then the voice came again, louder this time, "Please get me out!"

"There's someone here?! Why didn't you tell me there was someone here?!"

"Just give me the damn ax already!"

Finally, Sokka obliged.

"Stand back from the door!" Katara yelled to the person inside. After waiting a few seconds for them to follow her instruction, she hacked the door down with a few swings of the ax.

Sokka stepped into the room first, on high alert. Katara followed, anxious, but outwardly reasonably calm.

But there was no one there.

"In the wardrobe! Please let me out!"

Katara tried the handle of the huge wooden piece of furniture, but it too, was locked.

"Is there a key somewhere?" she asked the person inside.

"Oh, um, yeah. I think it's on the nightstand?" the voice sounded unsure.

"Nope!" called Sokka from his position between the bed and the window.

"In the drawer then?" now the voice sounded desperate.

Sokka rifled through several novels, a box of tissues, some pills. He came up empty handed and shrugged helplessly at his sister.

"Ok, I'll tell you what," Katara started, "if you stand by the righthand door, I can cut open the left one. Sound ok?"

"My right or your right?"

"Mine."

"Go ahead," the voice sounded terrified, and awfully young, Katara now noticed. She started cutting.

After a few swings, the left door was demolished. A little boy crawled out, younger than Katara by at least a few years. He had tears in his eyes.

"What's your name? Mine's Katara, and this is my brother Sokka."

"I'm Aang," the little boy sniffled.

"Well Aang, Katara, it's definitely time to leave now! The neighbours are on their way, and I don't know about you, but I'd really rather not deal with anymore today!" Sokka was on the verge of panic. Katara glanced out the window and saw that he was right.

"Spirits damn and blast," she muttered, then she grabbed Aang's hand and dashed back into the hallway, Sokka following close behind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's notes:**

 **First of all, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed the first chapter! I always kindof thought authors could exaggerate when talking about how much they appreciated reviews, but i realize now that it would be impossible to exaggerate how much your kind words meant to me! So please, keep the reviews coming!**

 **I had a whole bunch of other notes written out regarding the ages of all of the characters and the setting and all that, but I think that for now I'll leave that be. I may post it on my tumblr (spookykangaroo) or if you guys have any questions, you can ask them here and I'll do my best to answer anything that isn't too spoilery! (I don't know exactly where the plot of this story is going to take me yet, but i have an outline and know most of the main events)**

 **As a special thanks for the large number of reviews on chapter one, chapter two is going up super early, because i was so excited and could help myself from writing it! I will hopefully be uploading a new chapter at least once a week during the summer, most likely on Fridays, when I dont have any class, but when i get a summer job, that may change. After summer I will need to reevaluate my schedule in order to fit writing and uploading around my classes.**

 **Also, if you have a better idea for a title, please let me know, the placeholder one is fine for now but very unoriginal lol**

 **-X-**

On their way through the kitchen, Katara and Sokka grabbed the bags of food they had been filling. Katara had to let go of Aang's hand in order to keep a grip on both her bag and her ax, and although he seemed to be in shock, Katara felt reasonably confident that he would be able to tag along and follow simple instructions. Sokka took the stairs two at a time, Katara right behind, with Aang following last. At the bottom of the stairs, Sokka and Katara lept easily over the two fallen zombies, but Aang froze and stared in mute horror.

"Oh spirits," murmured Katara, then louder "Sokka, we need to get him out of here ASAP."

"Working on it," Sokka replied, staring intently out the front window "There's a dozen zombies between here and our car, I just need to figure out how to get to it…"

Aang didn't look up from the zombified bodies on the floor, but he seemed to suddenly find his voice. "We can take the car in the garage," he told the siblings.

"That's generous Aang, but the rest of our supplies are in our car: gas, sleeping bags, drinking water, we need it," Katara replied, as kindly as she could, given the mounting stress of their situation.

"No, it's perfect!" exclaimed Sokka, "I've got the perfect plan! Katara, you take Aang and these two bags, and take the car in the garage. Try to flatten or distract as many of them as you can, and I'll follow out the front door and take out any that are still in the way of our car. Go down a few streets and wait by the school that we passed on the way here, I'll be there right after. Then we'll get headed back!"

Sokka seemed completely confident in his plan, and although it worried Katara to leave him alone, she knew that he was a talented fighter with both his sword and boomerang, and she knew that now wasn't the time to argue, instead she wrapped him in a brief hug, murmured "be careful," into his chest, and stepped towards the garage door.

Aang's eyes were still glued to the twice-dead bodies on the ground, but when Katara said his name, he finally looked up at her.

"Aang, where are the keys for the car?" she asked gently.

Aang didn't reply, but stepped around her and through the garage door. He took a keyring off of a hook on the wall and handed it to her.

"Thank you," she said, clicking the button to unlock the vehicle.

Aang climbed into the passenger side, still ghostly silent, while Katara settled herself in the driver's seat, adjusting the seat height and mirrors slightly to suit her.

"Ready?" she asked, Aang simply nodded.

Katara clicked the garage door button attached to the sun visor. As the door slowly opened, the zombies shambled closer, seeming almost curious. Katara was glad that only one or two seemed to still be hanging around near the car Sokka was to take. As soon as the sliding door was fully open, Katara pressed her foot to the gas, accelerating the car to a near dangerous speed in order to run over the zombies.

She managed to take out five of them on the first pass, but three stepped out of the way, and one actually managed to cling to the windshield. Katara switched the car into reverse, and ran back over two of the three left standing. The third had moved behind a mailbox, and she couldn't kill it or the one on the windshield without totalling the car. She put the car in park and reached into the backseat for her ax. Then she slowly, carefully rolled down her window. Upon catching the scent of the humans inside, the zombie on the windshield immediately let go. Katara thought he might have left one or two fingers behind, but nevertheless, he did exactly what she had hoped, ambling slowly to the open window. No, he did better than she had hoped. He didn't even reach out his arms to grab her, just leaned his head towards the window for a bite.

Katara swung the ax hard, burying it deep in his skull. He dropped heavily to the ground. Katara leaned out the window to her waist to dislodge her ax.

"Perfect," she said as the zombie that had been hiding behind the mailbox approached. But this one was moving quicker than the last, and Katara worried that, restricted as she was by the car's small interior, she might not be able to outmaneuver it. It stretched out its arms to reach for the window as it drew closer.

"Damn and blast!" Katara put the car back into reverse to gain a small amount of distance from the zombie, backing her way down the street. It followed. She decided that would have to be good enough for now. If she wasted any more time trying to take down the three remaining zombies, she ran the risk of drawing more to them. Better to get out as quickly as possible. So she headed down the street backwards at a speed slightly faster than a jog, letting the one zombie follow, and leaving the final two for Sokka to deal with.

Two streets away from Aang's house, Katara accelerated sharply, leaving the zombie behind as they sped towards the school where Sokka had asked them to wait.

When they reached it, Katara put the car into park, and studied Aang's pale, drawn face. She decided that the best course of action would be to engage him in a normal conversation, hoping that she could distract him from his recent trauma.

"So, Aang, how old are you?" she asked, as pleasantly as she could manage. When she had worked with young children at summer camp, this had been one of the first questions she would ask them. They had always proudly told her that they were "thwee" or "six and a quarter". She hoped the question, something so ordinary and innocuous, would help to draw Aang out of his shock.

After a few silent moments, Aang finally said "I'm fourteen."

"Oh good!" Katara tried to keep her voice casual, but she knew it was coloured with relief. "There are some other fourteen year olds at base! I just know you'll get along with them really well!"

This time, Aang didn't skip a beat when he asked Katara about her own age.

"I'm seventeen," she told him, "and Sokka is eighteen. Hey, was this your elementary school?"

"Yes!" Suddenly Aang seemed much more animated as launched into a funny story about himself and his childhood friend, Bumi playing a prank on one of the teachers. Katara laughed in all the right places, but inwardly, she worried that this talkative mood was just another stage of shock, or perhaps grief.

By the time Aang's story was finished, Sokka was pulling up into the parking space next to theirs. Katara jumped out of the car and ran to hug her brother before he had even unbuckled his seatbelt. Brief as it had been, this had been the first time they had been apart since starting the mission, and she realized then that she had been almost sick with worry.

After the greetings, they set about moving everything useful from the car they had taken from Aang's house to their own. This included the slightly unpleasant task of syphoning out the gas. Having gotten a mouthful the first time she tried it, Katara always made Sokka take this job. He didn't seem to mind terribly, except for the fact that it forced him to stop talking about his heroic slaying of the zombies for a few seconds.

"You did a really great job too Katara!" He added as he wound down, "Oh! And you too Aang! It was really brave of you to help us!"

Aang looked at the older boy for a moment, then asked, "So, where exactly are we going?"

"I'm glad you asked! As soon as we get going, we can show you on the map, I just need us to get out of the neighbourhood and on the road before I can pull out the map!"

"He adores his maps," Katara stage whispered to Aang, "sometimes I think he loves them better than he loves me!"

Aang giggled as Sokka punched Katara lightly on the arm, "No way sis! Now c'mon! Everyone into the car! We need to get out of the area before more of them smell us and come running!"

Katara smiled as she climbed into the driver's seat. The world might have been a mess, but at least she was facing it with her brother and a new friend. And soon, they would be reunited with old friends, and as safe as they could hope to be in this crazy world.

 **-X-**

 **So we met our first zombies! I still haven't described them in a ton of detail, because I'm still sitting on the fence as to whether or not to keep this story rated T or move it to M.**

 **Please let me know your thoughts on this chapter! :)**


	3. Chapter 3

As soon as they had peeled away from the curb, Sokka had pulled out what seemed like several dozen maps, but was, in reality, only four extremely large ones. Katara knew that the first depicted all of Canada in reasonable detail. The second showed British Columbia in a much greater detail. The third pictured The Vancouver Area, right down to some of the large, important buildings, such as museums, universities, and the public library. Many tourist attractions. At the very least, it was useful in avoiding the most densely populated areas around the edges of the city. The final map depicted the United States. Katara wasn't sure why Sokka always insisted on using that one alongside the others. It wasn't as though they were planning to move that far South.

"Ok, so, right now, we're around here," Sokka pointed to a place on the map of British Columbia. "On the sea-to-sky highway. We just left Squamish about 10 minutes ago, and we've been driving about 50 kilometres an hour,"

Katara managed to refrain from sounding irritated when she said, "Sokka, I'm sure Aang knows where he lives."

Sokka had the decency to look slightly abashed, but plowed forward anyhow: "And we're carrying on to base camp, which is around here," he gestured to a place in a valley between five mountain peaks. "It's really not terribly far, and there's a clean lake. On a good day, and with a good vehicle, it's about a two hour drive to Vancouver, and on a bad day, maybe three and a half. But if you were to walk it, it would be a little over twelve hours. We figure that that, combined with the mountains, will keep us relatively safe from the huge Vancouver hoard, and its still distant enough from Whistler, or even any small towns like Squamish that hopefully they won't be able to smell us. In any case, almost everyone there is well armed and prepared."

"That's really smart!" enthused Aang, "Who thought of the location?"

Sokka seemed to puff up with pride, "I did!"

"But," interjected Katara, "we're still waiting for the decision from the boss. He thinks we might be better off even further North, or heading out to one of the nearby islands, or further to the East, deeper into the mountains."

"Who cares what that prick thinks?" asks Sokka, "For now, we're perfectly safe where we are, and besides that, we need the supplies that we can get from close towns. If we move too far, we won't have any sort of food readily available, or medicine."

"Speaking of supplies, we should go over the list before we get back…" but Katara was cut off as the radio crackled to life.

"Come in Katara," said a rough female voice through the radio, "Base to Katara."

"Go ahead Toph," Katara replied, pressing down on a button.

"Are you both on your way back?" asks Toph, "we're starting to worry up here"

"We're nearly there," replied Katara, and we got everything we needed! We hit up Whistler first, but a lot of the stores were already cleaned out, and there were too many zombies hanging around to enter many residential areas, so we moved along to Squamish after three days, like the plan."

"Katara, you know I'm not one to fuss about the methods. _I_ just wanted to check that you were safe."

"Oh! And we also got you a surprise! And tell Smellerbee we have something for her too! And have you washed your hair since we left? We brought back new shampoo as well, you cannot run around without bathing for weeks. It's pretty gross to be dirty all the time."

"Alright _Mom_ tara, but just know, you call it dirt, I call it a healthy coating of earth!"

"There is no way that could be healthy," sniffed Katara, "you better use this shampoo when I get it up there. I fought off three zombies in the hair products aisle to get it!"

"For the record, I actually fought off two of them while Katara shoved as many items in the cart as she could," interrupted Sokka.

Toph gave a hearty laugh. "Over and out Katara."

"Over and out," Katara finished the conversation.

"Who was that?" asked Aang, having waited quietly throughout the conversation.

"That's our friend Toph, she's great, but sometimes Katara wishes she would dress up more often." Sokka giggled.

"I don't mind that she won't dress up, I just wish she would _bathe_ ," Katara responded.

Aang got the impression that this was not a new topic of conversation between the two girls.

"And she's at base?" Aang prompted, "How many others are there?"

"Yes, there's probably about a hundred kids there, give or take a few, but we're closer with some of them than others," Katara explained

"Oh, like how you're closer with the Boss?" demanded Sokka, suddenly seeming annoyed. Katara glared at him.

"Sure, like that, but I was more referring to how close you seem to have gotten to Yue!" Katara snapped. After spending four days alone with her brother, he was certainly grating on her nerves.

Sokka flushed, but dropped the subject.

"Katara, you wanted to check over the supply list?" Aang encouraged.

"It's fine Aang, we got everything we needed."

They drove through a narrow mountain pass in a slightly uncomfortable silence, and finally the camp came into view. As they pulled up, kids and teenagers ran up to greet them. The youngest were probably around 12, while the oldest seemed to be maybe 19. Katara parked the Subaru and hopped out. Immediately, about a dozen sets of arms grabbed her in hugs. She laughed and tried to hug everyone back, although it was made difficult by the fact that some of them were behind her, and some were far taller or shorter than she was. Eventually she settled for flinging her arms out around the two nearest pairs of shoulders. Sokka jumped down from the passenger side and was hugged as well.

"Guys, guess what!" Katara half-shouted over the raucous greetings, "We found someone else! This is Aang!" She presented him with a flourish as he stepped cautiously out of the car. Immediately Aang found himself being hugged, and patted on the back. His hand was shaken at least a dozen times. In the chaos, he couldn't be sure, but he thought that one particular girl gave him about half of those handshakes.

As the bedlam started to die down, one more boy came running out of a building and towards the returning party.

"Katara!" he called, "you're back!"

"It's so good to see you again Jet! How has everyone been holding up here?"

"We're a lot better now that the most beautiful girl in the world is back," he replied smoothly

Katara blushed, while Sokka fumed, "What about the best navigator in the world?" he demanded, "Isn't everyone a lot better now that I'm back too?" but he was quickly distracted as a girl with pale silver hair embraced him.

The large group headed back towards the set of buildings, chatting amicably. Jet and Katara were holding hands, and it didn't even seem to bother Sokka too much, given that Yue had her arm wrapped securely around his waist.

"I thought you said this was a camp?" asked Aang, "I was expecting tents and stuff."

"It used to be an old mining town," explained Jet, "it was abandoned around the late eighteen-hundreds, early nineteen-hundreds."

"A few of our ancestors came over during the gold rush back then," added a tiny boy named The Duke.

"But Sokka is the one who knew about this place, and we all have him to thank for saving our butts when this whole mess started," finished Jet. Sokka managed to look at once pleased by the praise and affronted by the person giving it.

They reached the collection of dilapidated buildings, and Katara started explaining to Aang what they were each used for: "These two are dormitories. Girls' is slightly bigger because there's a few more of us. Boys' is on the right, they'll find a place for you there today. Washrooms are down by the lake, above the stream flowing _out_. This is the mess hall, food is prepared and eaten here. You'll need to help out with cooking at least once a day usually. Next to the mess hall is storage. Anything that isn't needed immediately is kept there: extra food and clothing, bedrolls, that kind of thing. This is technology central. It's mainly where Toph keeps the big radio, but we sometimes keep extra flashlights, and batteries in there too, or anything that could damage the food being kept in regular storage. This is school. It's not like the high school you were in before, but the older college students try to hold regular lessons for the younger kids. You only need to attend two each day, and you can pick what classes you want to take. We've got a few different languages, math, science, a lot of the regular subjects really. And right across the street from tech is command. That's where Jet and some of us get together to plan missions and stuff. You probably won't need to go there for a while. And in that field over there we have sports pretty much everyday. Sometimes soccer, sometimes football, or frisbee or dodgeball. It changes everyday, and everyone is encouraged to attend those, even if you just want to watch."

The tour had been quick, but Aang seemed to have grasped the general idea of it. "What about the other buildings?" he asked, gesturing towards another handful of structures only a few metres down the road.

Katara shrugged, "they're mostly unused. Some of them are too run-down and dangerous to be used. Others we suspect have mold or possibly asbestos or lead paint. A few hold minor operations, but for the most part, empty."

Aang nodded.

"I need to go find Toph and Bee to give them their treats, so you can go wash up and get some rest if you want. Ask for a bed in the boys dorm and get some sleep. Somebody will come get you when supper's ready."

Aang headed off towards the lake, and Katara moved towards tech. Toph rarely left her prized radio, she even slept in the tech building instead of the girls' dormitory. _Perhaps her desire for a call was what kept her from bathing_ speculated Katara. But no, she decided, Toph just likes being dirty.

 **~o~**

Almost six full days were spent at camp with very little excitement. Everyone attended classes, and played sports, and helped with meals. Katara noted happily that Aang seemed to be falling into the routine. He didn't tell her that he had horrible nightmares, and he begged the other boys who slept in the same room not to share the information. They patted his back and told him that it was alright, that some of them had suffered nightmares in the beginning too. And after six days, even though nighttime was still hard, he was starting to think everything _would_ be alright.

But after six days, the peace and calm of life at base camp was shattered.

In the middle of the night, Katara was woken up by a scream. She leapt out of bed and ran down the stairs of the dormitory. Emerging on the ground floor, she found no zombies, and was momentarily confused, until Toph barrelled right into her.

"Katara! Is that you?" asked the smaller blind girl.

"What's wrong? What's going on?" demanded Katara.

"Nothing's wrong! In fact, something is wonderfully right! Go get your boyfriend and come back to tech asap!"

Katara ran off without questioning Toph further. Jet was a sound sleeper and took a full three minutes to wake, but Sokka woke immediately upon hearing her voice. She dragged them both, groggy and tired, toward tech.

When they reached the small building, Toph gestured for them to enter and stay silent. She was talking to someone else on the radio.

"Is there a problem with Longshot and Bee?" Jet asked immediately. They were the only two out of camp at the moment, scouting up towards Golden Calf Mountain in the North.

"No, it isn't them," replied Toph, trying and failing to glare at him for disobeying her finger-to-lip instruction to stay quiet, "we finally got a signal from someone else!"

"Our leader is here now, you wanna talk to him?" She asked into her microphone.

"Absolutely," crackled a voice from the radio, a voice from far away.

 **-x-**

 **Author's notes:**

 **Hello! I promised an update "No later than next friday" and i am a woman of my word :P It is here! Hopefully updates will occur regularly on fridays from now on! This chapter is closer to the length i would like them to be, sitting just over 2000 words. Nice.**

 **If you want to know exactly where the basecamp is, you can check google maps, it's right next to the tiny lake between Conscience Peak, Golden Calf Peak, Sneak-Out Peak, Longspur Peak and Famine Peak. Its perhaps a half hour/45 minute drive North of Squamish, which is about an hour drive north of Vancouver. Although i expect that getting through the mountains, even though they are relatively small by B.C standards would make things more complicated :)**

 **Even though I am trying to keep things relatively accurate in terms of the landscape of BC and the cultures of the characters, I figure its ok to have added a fictitious small mining town lol. As far as I know, there has never been any sort of settlement in that particular area. The BC gold rush happened around the 1860s-1880s, so if there was no gold discovered in the area, it makes sense to me that the town would have been abandoned in the early 1900s.**

 **Also, i am very sorry to you all. I promised a** **zutara story, and it will end up that way** **! I still promise. But I couldnt discard Katara's relationship with Jet, and I want him for later in the story, so he is here and this is how it has to be for now.**

 **Finally, PLEASE review, I love to read your opinions on the story! Also, feel free to leave any questions you might have, and i will do my best to answer any that aren't spoilery!**

 **I have a tumblr: .com where you can also ask questions (and will likely get a quicker response) or you can follow to see (among other things) my posts about zutara and my frustrations with this story :P**


	4. Chapter 4

**A big thanks to everyone who has read/reviewed/followed/favourited this story! Especially , who really kicked my butt into gear to write this chapter! (Yes, I started it immediately after you reviewed, sorry it took me so long to finish and get it posted!) Please continue to review! (If we hit 50 reviews by the time Zutara week rolls around, I will try to do something special! Like idk, maybe i could publish a chapter each day of the week? I think that might be fun - extremely challenging, but fun!)**

 **(we've already got 30 reviews on 3 chapters, so i think 50 is a reasonable hope right?)**

 **Also, hopefully everyone saw the Q & A session that i left in the reviews of chapter 3, but if not thats ok because i basically didnt reveal anything anyway.**

 **-X-**

Zuko walked into the communications room for his shift just in time to hear his sister tell somebody through the radio, "Absolutely".

He would have pushed her aside and grabbed the transmitter, but he took a moment to think first, which, before the apocalypse, would have been something he would never have done. Even now it felt odd to pause before leaping into action.

But Zuko knew it would be senseless to attack his sister for control of the radio. She was a more skilled fighter. She had her beloved Remington semi-automatic rifle in her lap, and probably several more weapons hidden on her person. He hadn't even brought his dao swords. He wouldn't have thought that he might need his swords for radio duty. Nobody had contacted them through the radio. Radio duty was boring - until today.

As Zuko contemplated his move, Azula swung her chair around and grinned at him, gesturing for him to come closer and listen with her. Of course she had known he was there.

He approached slowly, listening intently as someone on the other end of the radio started to speak.

"Hello, I'm called Jet. I'm the leader of our group: Freedom from Zombies."

Something that sounded like a scuffle ensued, before a rough female voice said, "We aren't called that."

The owner of the first voice seemed to seize their transmitter again.

"Shut up. I'm the leader, so I get to name the group."

Somebody murmured in the background.

"Lovely," purred Azula, "I'm the leader of our group as well. My name is Azula Where are you located?"

Zuko bristled slightly at Azula's declaration of leadership, but kept silent. Nobody was foolish enough to challenge her, not even him.

"Currently we are in central British Columbia. Where are you?"

"That's wonderful, you're just North of us!" gushed Azula, "We're in Los Angeles!"

"Isn't that dangerous, staying in such a big city? We deliberately moved away from Vancouver, it's been completely overrun by them."

"Oh no, it's actually quite safe. We're living in the tallest building in the city, the Wilshire Grand Tower. Most zombies aren't keen to climb all of those stairs." She gave a delicate laugh, "I don't even think most of them can smell us when we're all the way up here. Zuzu, do you think they can smell us?" she ploughed forward without waiting for a reply, "And we take other safety measures as well. Guards posted and all that."

"You know what? You should come down here! We have a better environment for growing food, and realistically probably better security. Hiding out in the Mountains is great and all, but would the zombies really be affected by the cold? They'll reach you eventually. Come live with us!"

"What? Are you crazy? Bad idea Azula, very bad idea!" Zuko finally exploded, "We have absolutely no idea how dangerous the route from there to here would be! They could be eaten five minutes after leaving their hideout!"

"Who is that? It's not really very cold here. I'm sure we could get there if we wanted to!" Great, Jet was the kind of person to take a challenge, rather than do the smart, safe thing.

"We have no idea what's beyond our city! Do you have any knowledge of the state of the world right now? Beyond the fact that it's been overrun by _zombies_?" shot back Zuko, having at last seized control of the transmitter.

Azula snatched it back from him, looking annoyed, but not angry.

"Zuzu, I think it's time for you to leave now."

"What? No! My shift on radio duty starts now!"

"Zuko, would you even know how to work the radio if I left you alone with it?" her patience seemed to be wearing thin, but she still wasn't reaching for her rifle, so instead of leaving, which would have been the wiser course of action, Zuko stubbornly sat himself down in the second chair.

Azula glared at him for another moment, then seemed to decide that it wasn't worth her effort to kick him out. Instead she continued the conversation with the people on the radio.

"What happened?" The rough female voice demanded, having heard nothing but silence for the last few moments while Azula had muted the radio, "Are you there? Azula? Come in Azula?"

"Yes, I'm here. Relax. Nothing happened. So, how many people do you have with you?"

"Good, for a second there I thought this shitty old radio cut us out. There's a little over a hundred here. Most of them are babies. And I mean that in the metaphorical sense. Although some of the kids are pretty young. My name's Toph by the way. I'm in charge of radio communications here. How many do you got living in this Wilshire place?"

"Close to three hundred. Thankfully most of the _babies_ were weeded out of Los Angeles first thing."

Zuko shuddered at the remembrance. In the first few weeks, Azula had seemed to enjoy sending people out on hopeless missions and watching them get eaten almost as much as she enjoyed going out and putting bullets in zombie heads herself. The worst part of him had hoped that Ty Lee might get evicted. Her bubbly attitude was far too much for the circumstances. But he knew that, for all her cruelty, his sister would never throw out her adored girlfriend. And of course, neither Ty Lee, nor their childhood friend Mai would object to Azula's dreadful games.

"Well personally, I still don't see," Toph laughed suddenly, as though she had made a pun, "exactly how beneficial it could possibly be for us to move to California. We're pretty comfy here."

An argument erupted on the other end of the radio. It sounded like the transmitter was passed around between several people. Voices were raised and then lowered, but none of the words came through clearly. At one point the transmitter seemed to get dropped to the floor. After several minutes, it seemed as though the situation had been resolved.

"We'll call you back in two days to let you know our plan," said a new voice. Perhaps not so resolved after all.

The signal cut out. Azula sighed. Zuko exhaled with relief. Maybe they would decide not to make the long journey after all.

"Well then dear brother, I leave radio duty to you. I need to go tell everyone about the new guests we'll be hosting soon! Toodles!" She darted off. Zuko held no expectations for her to inform everyone. But he certainly assumed that she would tell Ty Lee and Mai. In a way, he supposed that to her, they were everyone - everyone that mattered at least.

Zuko resigned himself to the boredom that would be the rest of his shift.

 **-X-**

 **So there's chapter 4! Please feel free to follow/fav and to leave your thoughts! What do you think the argument was about? Why did they hang up so abrubtly? Hopefully chapter 5 will be up on Friday (But we'll see lol)**

 **Also hurrah! We met Zuko at last! I know you all were waiting for that with baited breath lol!**

 **This chapter wasn't quite as long as I would have liked, (A wee bit over 1000 words) but alas.**

 **Finally, I realize that I have a few private messages, and i love that and sincerely appreciate those who sent them, and i have read them, but its close to 4am right now, so i need to get some sleep. I hope you will excuse my answering a bit later! Feel free to send me PMs if you guys have questions or suggestions that you dont wanna put in the reviews!**


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